He can't believe it took him almost 6 months to work up the courage and ask.
The final straw came at 1am, on a wintry, November evening. Booth had ducked into the diner, seeking reprieve from the slicing winds as he walked from the Hoover building to his flat. Almost immediately he had spotted an auburn head, sat in their usual booth, yet when he approached, almost as soon as he reached a profile angle, had seen the ripe swell of her belly, he balked, realising the auburn locks did not belong to whom he thought. Yet for a second, just for a tiny moment in time, he had thought –
Well, lets just say his thoughts sent him straight to Temperance Brennan's door, a bag of take out in hand and an optimistic smile on his face.
"Hey Bones!" Booth greeted. "Alright if I pop in for a few minutes? It's freezing out there, and I come baring food."
"Of course, Booth." Brennan stepped aside, stealing the bag from his hands as he hung up his coat. "Ooh, Thai." Brennan smirked, digging further into the bag to examine the options.
"Well, I know how you love surprises." Booth retorted.
"This isn't a surprise at all, Booth. You always go for Thai." Brennan frowned, lines deepening as Booth laughed. "Hey! I will not have you laughing at my expense in my own home."
"Sorry, Bones, but its just so easy." Booth grinned, grabbing the bag off his partner and steering her towards the sofas. The two ate in near silence, the only interruption coming when Brennan began discussing Booth's need to fulfil his inner hunting desires by bringing her food.
"I'm not some Neanderthal, Bones." He exclaimed, pointing at her with his chopsticks and lowering the container to his lap. "My life does not revolve around food and reproduction."
"The entire human existence revolves around food and sex, along with finding shelter and fitting into socio-cultural norms, Booth. You're no exception."
"How about people who are abstinent, like priests?" His brows rose, a small smile of victory beginning to form on his face.
"Have you seen Angela recently?" Brennan countered, grin threatening to widen. "I'm almost positive that her abstinence has caused her life to focus even more intensely on sex than before, but now, instead of participating, she fantasises."
"Are you saying that all priests hide secret fantasies, Bones? That statement is so wrong on so many levels –" He started, before Brennan cut him off.
"I imagine after such a long spell of abstinence, the priests' imagination would be in overdrive. They would, most likely, have very graphic fantasies." Brennan smirked, twirling her final noodles round her chopsticks.
"Heaven, have mercy…" Booth muttered, returning his focus to his food as Brennan smirked at him, placing her empty food carton aside and simply watching him for a moment.
"Booth." She called, catching his attention. Her demeanour changed as she sat forward, leaning her elbows on her knees. She squinted at Booth, examining him as she would a pile of bones, whilst he squirmed under her gaze. "I have the feeling that you didn't just come here to feed me."
"Using your gut there, Bones?" He countered, shovelling the final noodles from his own dish into his mouth.
"No, I'm using logic." Brennan replied, picking up the myriad of cartons and walking through to the kitchen. Booth sighed, lifting himself from the comfortable sofa and following his partner. "It is inductive reasoning; in my experience, when you turn up at my apartment in the early hours with food, the visit serves a secondary purpose."
"Educated guess, at best." Booth replied, leaning against the wooden workspace. He watched as Brennan's nimble hands rinsed the cartons for recycling, before she span to face him, face set in an almost impatient stare. "What? Can't a guy bring his partner food in the middle of the night without being faced with the Spanish Inquisition?"
"I don't know what that means." Bones stated blankly, crossing her arms across her chest. "We both have work tomorrow, Booth, and it's getting late. Why are you here?" Booth sighed, letting his back slide down the cabinet until he was sat on the floor, Brennan standing above him. "I do have chairs, you know."
"This doesn't really call for chairs." Booth replied, patting the linoleum beside him. Brennan slid down to floor level herself, seating herself parallel to Booth so that their long limbs lay facing the centre of the room. Brennan coughed awkwardly, feeling both too far from Booth and too near all at the same time.
Silence dominated for a good few minutes, and Brennan felt her eyelids slowly lowering, until Booth's strong voice broke her reverie. "Before the coma, you asked for my stuff."
"Your… stuff?" Brennan frowned, before her eyes widened. She placed a hand on his wrist, brows raised, while a light smile graced her features. "Oh! Your sperm. Booth, you are a grown man, you should be able to hear and say the word sperm without squirming."
"I know, I know." He muttered, turning his hand so that her fingers laced between his own. "You asked for it so that you could have a baby."
"Well, what else would I want it for?" Brennan quipped, before a sharp glance from Booth shut her up.
"You asked for my stuff so you could have a kid, and before I went under, I said you could have it." Booth stated concisely. "When I came round, you never asked me about it again. I never made any donations, so I knew it wasn't that you weren't mentioning to me. You stopped pursuing my stuff entirely. It was like, BAM! You just turned your back on the idea of having a kid."
"I didn't. I still want a baby, sometimes overwhelmingly so, but the circumstances changed, Booth. It wasn't right anymore." Bones replied, squeezing his hand tightly. A thin film of tears had formed across her eyes, but she was determined to keep them in, to not show weakness right now.
"What, though? What changed, Bones? If it's about the tumour and genetics, the doctors reassured me that the condition was not hereditary, it was just a coincidence –"
"Its nothing to do with the health of your sperm, nor have I turned my back on motherhood. It's just…" Brennan broke off, biting her lip.
"Just what?"
"How much of my story do you remember? From the coma." Brennan asked.
"Every second, Bones. I lived it, remember?"
"I know, I know. Its just – do you remember the ending? Where Kathy and Andy are in the chair?" Her eyes were wide, and her hand squeezed his lightly for an answer.
He didn't mean to inhale so sharply, but he couldn't help it. Booth had relived every nanosecond of the ending Brennan had read to him more times than he could remember. He'd even been tempted to pull Brennan into his lap once and bear the consequences, just to see if it felt as good as it had in that dream. "Yes. Kathy told Andy she was pregnant."
"I want that." She blurted out, leaving Booth frowning at her. "Not the dream life – I want to be able to look someone I care for in the eyes and tell them I'm pregnant, and have them be as happy as I am."
"I'd be happy." Booth countered, reaching across to grasp her hand. "And I bet Angela would be happy."
"It is different and you know it." Brennan replied, head falling against the cabinet door. Taking a deep breath, Brennan looked across; her piercing eyes holding Booth captive. "What I am insinuating is that I want the father to help me make a family. For once in my life, I want to embrace the cultural norms. I want to bring my child up in a way that is perceived as paramount to its wellbeing. I need a man who will court me for an indeterminate amount of time, who will participate in an antiquated ritual in an attempt to bind himself to me, who will physically bind himself to me through the creation of a foetus."
"And that's not me."
"You would be a wonderful father, but I don't want a sperm donor anymore, Booth." "I want a life partner who will assist me in the raising of the children, who will care for me when I'm ill, who will feel affection for me and fulfil my primal needs."
"And which clause do I not fulfil?" Booth challenged.
"Booth –"
"I've known for years, Bones. What I feel for you was never just affection or friendship." Brennan's face was blank, watching Booth with guarded curiosity. "I want to be there with you, every step of the way. I always wanted to be there with you, wanted to be a real father to your child, but you wanted to go it alone, and I would do anything, anything to make you happy." His entire body turned to face her, and his free hand came round, whirling through the strands of hair that rested round her face. "I want you to give it a chance, Bones. Give us a chance, we owe each other that." Booth's own face began to drop as Brennan remained stoic, no hint of an answer anywhere to be found. Panicking, he continued, praying she'd say what he needed to hear.
"I'm not asking you to promise to spend the rest of your life with me. I know you're not the type to do that. I'm just asking you to let me court you for an indeterminate amount of time, to try and persuade you that the antiquated ritual of marriage is worth it, and to know that if, by some gift of God, we created a baby – and that's what it would be, Bones, not a foetus - I would be at your side every second of the way, loving you and the baby with all of my heart."
"Children aren't gifts of God." Brennan stated, closing her eyes to his words. "They occur when an egg is inseminated, it's sci-"
"Don't even try and tell me our baby would be anything short of a miracle." Booth stated, eyes boring into his partner, catching her gaze once more. He watched the tears gather round her lashes, her silence saying the words her mouth wouldn't. Booth's head dropped to his chest, knowing her silence was as good as a no. A dry, teary laugh left his throat as he hauled himself to his feet. "I'm going to go."
"Booth!" Brennan called, scrambling to her feet after him. The door was open when she reached him, grabbing his lapels to keep him from leaving. "Booth…" She sighed, gnawing her lip as she looked up at him. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Brennan muttered. Tears gathered on her lashes as she leant up, placing her lips against his cheek and holding for a moment. . "Give me time, Booth." Brennan stated, still clinging onto his lapels with near desperation. "I just need a little time."
He had known, the second she had grabbed his jacket, that he wasn't going to let her just walk away. Before she had a chance to pull away, he turned, transferring her lips from his cheek to his mouth. One of his hands tangled in her hair, the other dallied around her waist as he deepened the kiss, sighing thankfully as he felt Brennan warm to his ministrations, returning the kiss with fervour as her hand crawled from his lapel to his face.
Booth pulled away, watching as a few stray tears ran down Brennan's face, while her lips sat in an almost watery smile. "Time." He repeated, removing one hand from her waist and letting the other reach for the hand that rested on his own face, holding it for a moment before backing out of reach. "I can give you that." He nodded swiftly. "We've got the rest of our lives, Bones." He smiled, backing out of her door. His joy was infectious, and Brennan wore a genuine smile of her own as she watched him back away.
"Good night, Booth."
"Good night, Bones."
Originally there was a proper, get together ending, but I can't imagine Brennan not wanting to think it over! So TAH DAH!
Review question of the day - who is your favourite new squint? Its a toss up between Mr Nigel-Murray and Wendel for me, though with Wendel its only really his dream-form tough guy that I love. Expect to see Mr Nigel-Murray popping his lovely little head into my next story in some way or another (plus Angela! So far I've only written stories with Booth and Brennan (well, technically Brennan wasn't in the last one, so only Booth. That has to be fixed.).